Return of the friendless leader

It is ability, not popularity, that has Thabo Mbeki poised to begin a second term as South Africa's leader, writes Rory Carroll.

For the democratically elected leader of a country it was a strange motto, but Thabo Mbeki seemed to relish it: no one likes me, I don't care. It started as a terrace chant of defiance by fans of Millwall, the London football club loathed by rivals, and at some point South Africa's President made it his own. He never articulated it so bluntly, of course, but the evident disdain for what others thought of him shone through. Whether addressing the ANC party faithful or captains of industry, there would be no jokes or effort to connect, no projection of personality.

It has done him little electoral harm. Next week he is poised to win a second five-year term when he leads the ANC to a crushing victory at the polls, perhaps strengthening its political dominance since apartheid fell in 1994. As leader of the region's economic and diplomatic powerhouse, he is the most important man in Africa.

It is curious, then, that Mbeki, 62, is so unloved. In recent weeks he has reinvented his public persona by playing with children and dancing, an astonishing departure which has won rave reviews; for a decade, as Nelson Mandela's deputy and then as President, he abhorred the common touch. Give him an opportunity to empathise with the poor and sick and he would retreat into technocratic jargon. Give him a baby and he would plop it into the nearest lap.

"We've got a government of the people, for the people, by the people led by a president who doesn't like people," satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys said on a theatre stage last week. The audience boomed with applause.

Mandela's well-documented coolness to his successor was visible again last week in the awkwardness between the two when they shared a podium in Johannesburg. Even his parents, ANC stalwarts, did not love Mbeki in a conventional way and encouraged him to regard the movement as his real family. Reunited after decades apart, father and son shook hands stiffly. He seldom visits his mother, though in her cupboard she has a mug with his face on it.

Why is Mbeki unloved? And does it matter? "There was no way Mbeki was ever going to be adored the way Mandela was. So he advanced his career in a different way, by getting people to respect him, even if they did not like him," says Mark Gevisser, a Johannesburg-based author whose biography of the president is to be published this year.

To those who knew him in exile, as a student at the University of Sussex, a spokesman in the ANC's London office and a leader-in-waiting at the ANC's headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, the change was startling. The young charmer who loved Monty Python and Not the Nine O'Clock News, whose camaraderie and intellect convinced Western governments to impose sanctions, and white Afrikaner leaders to accept the unsustainability of apartheid, vanished.

He kept the pipe, and the penchant for Scotch, but became aloof and tetchy upon entering government. "I was hugely impressed by his intelligence, his sense of humour. I don't know what happened after 1994. I don't think any of us know him," said Uys, speaking after his one-man show.

Does the President's personality matter? Electorally, it is largely a non-issue, says Mattes, the pollster, because South Africans vote for parties, not candidates. But its impact on government policy is profound and complex, say analysts.

On one level Mbeki is refreshing. Here is a politician with no time for image consultants or sound bites. The rest of the ANC dances and sings at rallies but he is usually happier in his chair.

Good governance is not about popularity so arguably there was no better man to deal with the horrible surprise in 1994 that the newly elected ANC government had inherited no bulging coffers to fund the houses, piped water and electricity it had promised the poor. The minority white regime had bequeathed a distorted siege economy close to collapse, which required long, painful fixing.

In effect, that meant dumping the ANC's cherished notions of central planning and wholesale nationalisation in favour of conservative, pro-market policies. Ten years later poverty and unemployment are worse but there is a new black middle class and an economy that is stable and poised, according to the Government, to deliver jobs and hope.

Mbeki knew the ANC's coalition partners in the unions and Communist Party would not forgive him but he went ahead anyway, according to one observer. The same thing happened when Mbeki lobbied the movement to swap armed struggle for negotiations. It was hugely unpopular among his own comrades, nearly ended his career, and yet he was proved right.

Born into modest means in rural Eastern Cape, Mbeki was from boyhood groomed for leadership and apprenticed to a series of father-figure grandees, including Oliver Tambo. There is one issue, HIV/AIDS, that has wrecked confidence in his judgement. An estimated 5.3 million South Africans have the virus, and 600 people die each day.

Mbeki, the walking encyclopedia unafraid to be unpopular, fell for dissident scientists and crypto-scientists who denied HIV caused AIDS, and warned that anti-retroviral drugs could shorten rather than extend lives. Hundreds of thousands were dying on his watch, to the horror of a world which had feted the ANC, yet still Mbeki stayed firm.

Under pressure he "withdrew from the debate" and this month the state finally started a national treatment program - just in time to neutralise HIV/AIDS as an election issue.

Now comes the twist. In the past few weeks of campaigning, the candidate Mbeki appears reborn. Instead of orating at rallies he has been canvassing door to door, visiting townships, sitting on floors, listening. It has been a shrewd rebranding exercise but appears to have awoken something.

Long after the sun has sunk and television crews have left Mbeki has continued, eager to engage with ordinary folk. To his surprise and delight some have cheered and jostled to touch him.

South Africans have glimpsed another leader, one who cares what they think, and for that they seem to like him.